“Alright then…” Frank began in a low deep voice, huddling inside his suspicious gray hood. “So now that we finally established our shadowy conspiracy organization, what’s our plan?” He looked at Casey and me in turn.

Casey and I rolled our eyes.

“Well, we clearly need more information,” Casey stated. “Both about the world and the developers. We still don’t know which of the theories is correct.”

“Right… so we infiltrate the dev’s headquarters mission impossible style and steal all their world-invasion files.”

“So I’m going to do some research on them and try to figure out what their deal is. You two can go and explore the world in the meantime,” Casey continued, ignoring Frank’s joke. “But –” She raised a finger while glancing at me. “ – I think it would be smarter if only one of you went in person –” She turned to Frank. “ – while the other logged into the game. That way, it’s less dangerous but you can still explore hidden places.”

That was… actually pretty smart.

“Oooh… yeah, we could do that, couldn’t we?”

“What would we be searching for, though?” I asked.

Casey shrugged. “Not sure. Anything, really. You could go to the other portals in that world and see where they lead, I guess?”

I nodded. Not a bad call. I’d only ever opened and entered this one portal, after all.

“Alrighty!” Frank rubbed his palms. “We have a master plan going now! I gotta log into the game and coerce my clanmates to give me free stuff for our journey then.”

Oh, our clanmates. I’d completely ghosted them ever since discovering the portal, hadn’t I? I should probably at least say hi or something…

“Alright, good.” Casey nodded and then stopped. “You know… it just occurred to me. What if the other portals don’t lead between the game world and Earth? What if they lead to entirely different worlds?”

“Oooh! A fellow conspiracy theorist! I taught you well!” Frank praised her.

The idea hit me, though. I had assumed they were all random portals between two worlds, but what if they were some kind of interconnected multiverse wormhole network?

I shook my head.

“Well, only one way to find out,” I said. “So, anyway, tomorrow is Monday. You got time to play, Frank?”

“Of course! Can’t wait for the promised fantastical adventure!” Then he frowned. “Wait, so it was just playing the game all along! I got bamboozled!”

“Uh, we can do it the other way around,” I offered.

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“Nah, I’m just messing around. You’re the one who can see the portals.” Frank laughed. “And more importantly, the one who is logging in has to be the meat shield in case something happens, right? I don’t wanna brag, but I have plenty of meat on my shield.” He grinned.

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Casey asked with a frown.

“I dunno, it’s probably a metaphor for something.” Frank shrugged.

“Anyway…” Casey said whilst shaking her head. “I’ll start by investigating the backgrounds of every employee of that company and see if something jumps out at me.”

“Jumps out? Careful there, don’t want that to be literal,” Frank warned. “You never know with these pesky interdimensional evil gods.”

Whatever Casey was about to say was interrupted by the sound of our main door opening.

“Oh… Mom is back,” I said, a little sad.

Just as always, I closed my eyes for a second, focused, and reverted to my original form. Once I opened my eyes, I couldn’t help but sigh. It still felt like crap like this.

“Oooh, right. We should probably turn back too. Well, unless we can convince your mom we are cosplaying,” Frank said whilst closing his eyes and eventually turning back.

Casey did the same, and we were back to the forms we knew the best.

“Damn, I never thought I would miss having cow horns.” Frank frowned.

Casey nodded absent-mindedly, rubbing the top of her head where her ears used to be. It looked like I wasn’t the only one who felt this way upon turning back.

With everyone back to being full-time humans again, we got out of our robes, left my room, and greeted my mom. I proceeded to help her cook lunch, and we ate as if nothing had happened. Well, except for the three of us sometimes getting lost in our thoughts. Couldn’t help it. Despite everything, there was still a ton to take in.

After lunch, my friends were ready to leave.

“See you!”

“Bye, Renee! Bye, Missus Chrona!”

And with that, my Sunday ‘fantastical adventure’ with my friends ended.

It felt like a very long day. So much had happened. And it was still only early afternoon. There was plenty of time for other things.

I went back to my room while Mom went to watch TV, her way of relaxing.

I turned on my PC, and even though it felt weird after everything, logged onto RLO.

As expected, my clanmates immediately said hi as soon as they saw the notification telling them I was online.

I returned the greeting this time and apologized for ignoring them last time, saying that I’d been distracted back then – which was true – and then I chatted with them even as I teleported my character into a city and directed her to the market to buy some proper non-suspicious equipment.

My clanmates also talked about the new area and the new boss, saying what the best strategy was against it, its weaknesses and mechanics, and someone even got the ultra-rare soaked journal lore item drop.

“What does it say?” I asked, curious.

“Dunno, I was mad I got it instead of the armor so I didn’t read it,” they replied. “Hold on, I’ll look into the log.”

I waited for a moment.

“Ehh, it’s some cryptic shit. Something about a civilization being drowned in a flood, and the last survivors escaping to another world. No idea what that’s supposed to mean.”

I frowned to myself, not liking the ‘another world’ part.

“Maybe it’s implying the monsters there are survivors who got mutated or something,” someone else suggested.

“Yeah, that could be it. Man, that’s kinda fucked up, isn’t it?”

The conversation went on about various theories on what it meant, but I’d already finished stocking up on the items I wanted and said bye before logging out.

Something bothered me about it, though. Casey had mentioned that other portals might lead to completely different worlds. What if there was a portal leading to that flooded world right there? The lore item implied the people had crossed over to the RLO world, but did it mention how had they done that?

After all, the dream had shown us three fighting the boss. What reason would we have to do something dangerous like that?

To access the portal from which the dying civilization came through. One… that someone had to have closed behind them. And for that, they had to be able to see it.